the end of the journey she went slowly unconscious, and I was glad for her, even though by then I feared… well, I feared.’
‘My dear man.’
I sat for a while looking back to the past, and then swallowed and told him the rest of it coldly.
‘She was in a coma for four days, going deeper… I stayed with her. They let me stay. They said they couldn’t save the baby, it was too soon. In another month, perhaps… They told me the blood vessel must have been leaking for ages… it was the blood leaking into her brain and down her spinal nerves that had given her the headaches and backaches… but even if they’d diagnosed the trouble earlier they couldn’t have done much… it would have split open more one day, as it did… so perhaps it was better we didn’t know.’
I stopped. No tears. All I couldn’t have borne at that point was sympathy, and Gerard didn’t offer it.
‘Life’s most unfair,’ he said calmly.
‘Yes.’
He didn’t say I would get over it, or that time was a great healer. He didn’t say I would find another girl. Marry again… I approved of Gerard more and more.
‘Thank you for telling me,’ he said.
‘I don’t usually,’ I said apologetically.
‘No. Flora told me. You clam up, she said, if anyone asks.’
‘Flora chatters.’
‘Chattering does good, sometimes.’
I was silent. What I felt, having told him about Emma, was a sort of release. Chattering helped. Sometimes.
He finished his brandy and stood up to go. ‘If you have any more thoughts, telephone.’
‘O.K.’
He walked towards the door and stopped by a side table upon which stood three or four more photo frames among Emma’s collection of shells.
‘Your mother?’ he asked, picking up the lady on horseback with hounds. ‘Most handsome.’
‘Mother,’ I nodded.
He put her down. Picked up another. ‘Father?’
‘Father.’
He looked at the strong amused face above the colonel’s uniform with its double row of medal ribbons, at the light in the eyes and the tilt of the chin, at the firm half-smiling mouth.
‘You’re like him,’ Gerard said.
‘Only in looks.’ I turned away. ‘I loved him when I was small. Adored him. He died when I was eleven.’
He put the picture down and peered at the others. ‘No brothers or sisters?’
‘No.’ I grinned faintly. ‘My birth interfered with a whole season’s hunting. Once was enough, my mother said.’
Gerard glanced at me. ‘You don’t mind?’
‘No, I never did. I never minded being alone until I got used to something else.’ I shrugged abruptly. ‘I’m basically all right alone. I will be again, in the end.’
Gerard merely nodded and moved on out into the hall and from there to the kitchen and beyond to the rear door, where neither of us shook hands because of the slings.
‘A most productive and interesting evening,’ he said.
‘I enjoy your company.’
He seemed almost surprised. ‘Do you? Why?’
‘You don’t expect too much.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like… er… Chinese takeaway on your knees.’ It wasn’t what I truly meant, but it would do.
He made an untranslatable noise low in his throat, hearing the evasion and not agreeing with it. ‘I expect more than you think. You underestimate yourself.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘Good night.’
‘Good night.’
He drove away and I locked the doors and went back through the house to fetch the supper dishes, to stack them in the dishwasher. I thought of what I’d said to him about being all right alone, hearing in memory in the accumulated voices of years of customers the sighs and sadnesses of the bereaved. They talked of the common experience that was freshly awful for each individual. Two years, they said, was what it took. Two years before the sun shone. After two years the lost person became a memory, the loss itself bearable. I’d listened to them long before I thought of needing their wisdom, and I believed them still. Grief couldn’t be escaped, but it would pass.
I finished tidying downstairs and went up to bed, to the room where Emma and I had made love.
I still slept there. She often seemed extraordinarily near. I woke sometimes in the early hours and stretched out for her, forgetting. I heard the memory of her giggle in the dark.
We had been lucky in love; passionate and well matched, equal in satisfaction. I remembered chiefly her stomach flat, her breasts unswollen, remembered the years of utter fun, her gleeful orgasms, the sharp incredible ecstasy of ejaculation. It was better to remember that.
The room was quiet now. No unseen presence. No restless spirit hovering.
If I lived with